Environment in India 2047

Indigenous rights in 2047: Learning from Indigenous Himalayan Youth

Mabel Denzin Gergan, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies, Vanderbilt University

Mabel Denzin Gergan is a geographer by training, and her research focuses on postcolonial environmentalism, Tribal/Indigenous theorization, anti-colonial politics, and race and ethnicity in South Asia. Born in Sikkim, India, she has lived and worked extensively in the Eastern (Sikkim) and Western (Uttarakhand and Ladakh) Himalayas. More recently, she has collaborated with scholars working on Indigenous politics in North America (British Columbia and the Navajo Nation), focusing on Indigenous youth activism, infrastructure politics, and decolonial futurity.

India's cities in 2047: Climate-smart, or ecologically foolish?

Harini Nagendra, Director, Research Center & Professor, Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability, Azim Premji University

Harini Nagendra has conducted 30 years of research examining social-ecological transformations in South Asia’s forests and cities. Her books include Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future and Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities. She has received several awards including the US National Academy of Sciences 2009 Cozzarelli Prize and the 2013 Elinor Ostrom Senior Scholar award. She also writes mystery fiction set in 1920s colonial Bangalore, with the first book The Bangalore Detectives Club published in May 2022.

Water in India 2047: Drawing the right lessons from the past 75 years

Mihir Shah, Distinguished Professor & Chair, Water Science and Policy Programme, Shiv Nadar University

Mihir Shah is a leading scholar, activist and policy maker on water management and rural livelihoods in India. From 2009 to 2014 he was Member of the National Planning Commission, handling Water Resources, Rural Development and Decentralised Governance. From 2019 to 2021 he chaired the Government of India's Committee to draft the new National Water Policy. For three decades now, Shah has lived and worked with India’s indigenous communities, in the remote hinterlands of central India, forging a new paradigm of sustainable development.

Moderator: Bharat Punjabi, Research Fellow, University of Toronto's Global Cities Institute

Bharat Punjabi is a Research Fellow at the University of Toronto's Global Cities Institute. He also teaches urban policy and South Asia courses in the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. His main interests and publications have centered on water governance and policy in large metropolitan cities with a particular focus on water re-allocation from rural/agricultural to urban/industrial use in India. His current teaching and research interests are on metropolitan governance in mega urban regions in India.